Rosewater Currant Cakes

Pat Mead, the foodways interpreter at Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, found this recipe in a facsimile of a manuscript titled “Fanny Pierson Crane: her receipts 1796: confections, savouries and drams.” The cookie is sold at the museum. When I tested the recipe, I added half a cup of flour (2 ½ cups total) to keep the cookies from spreading. Rosewater can be found at the museum’s gift shop, in the international aisle of many grocery stores, or in Middle Eastern and Indian markets.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until edges are brown. Remove from the baking sheet and cool on racks.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

A step back in time – and cookie recipes – at Genesee Country Village

Though some people may think baking cookies is too much work, today’s cookie baking is a snap compared to what cooks had to do in the 18th and 19th centuries. Nothing brings that point home like watching historic foodways interpreter Pat Mead make up a batch of rosewater-currant cakes at the Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford.

In the spacious, fire-lit kitchen of the Livingston-Backus House (the first mansion to be built in Rochester’s Third Ward back in the late 1820s), Mead, dressed in period costume, walked me through the recipe, which originated in a 1796 manuscript titled Her Receipts by Fanny Pierson Crane.

Cakes? Aren’t we making cookies?

Technically, yes, but in those days, people used the British term tea cakes. The work cookie, derived from the Dutch word koekje, meaning little cake, was absorbed into the vernacular a little later.

So what was this late 18th century little cake all about? Mead explains the ingredients:

Rosewater. Until vanilla became available to American and European bakers later in the 19th century, rosewater was the no. 1 flavoring agent. People made their own rosewater by distilling rose petals from their gardens.

Currants. There were no seedless raisins in those days, and stoning your own (that is, removing the seeds) was dirty, sticky, tedious work. It was far easier to use naturally seedless dried currants that grew locally or imported currants that came to the region via the Erie Canal.

Sugar. Refined sugar was sold in solid, conical-shaped sugar loaves. The cook or housewife would cut a piece off with a pair of sugar nips then crush it with a mortar and pestle to the desired consistency. Sugar was an expensive luxury, so “the wealthier the family, the larger the sugar bowl,” says Mead.

Butter. Without any leavening agents at that time, the cook had to make sure to beat a lot of air into her butter to get the cookies to rise. This was done by hand, and could take up to 20 minutes of vigorous whipping.

Flour. Rochester was known as the Flour City, and the region was a powerhouse of flour production. Queen Victoria ordered her flour from here, as it was known as the “finest pastry flour you could get,” notes Mead.

Eggs. Most households raised their own chickens for eggs. Still, you never knew how many eggs you would have, so you didn’t waste them.

As for baking the cookies, Mead used a reflector oven, a small, squat tin box the size of a portable hibachi grill that opens on the top and has one exposed side. The baking sheet with the cookies would go inside the box, with the open side exposed to the wood-burning fire. Sitting near the flames, the box would draw in the heat, which in turn would be reflected and radiated on the sides. The 19th century cook knew by intuition how close to leave the box to the oven and how long to leave the cookies in the box.

These rosewater-currant cakes are made regularly at the living history museum. “We sell three types of tea cakes here. The ladies like rosewater tea cakes, the men like maple sugar cookies, and the kids go for the regular sugar cookies,” says Mead.